March 15 (Bloomberg) -- John Leguizamo is probably best
known to audiences for his creepy portrayal of pygmy fetishist
Henri de Toulouse Lautrec in “Moulin Rouge.”

A favorite of director Spike Lee (“Summer of Sam”) the
Colombian-born actor has been performing his solo shows like
“Mambo Mouth” on and off Broadway since 1993. Raised in
Jackson Heights, Queens, Leguizamo, 46, is a master of cross-gender mimicry. He has the social satirist’s gift for lampooning
stereotypes while defusing their prejudicial power.

In his new show, “Ghetto Klown,” Leguizamo slides under
his own microsope, telling the audience about competitive
dissing in high school, mentors like famed acting teacher Lee
Strasberg, and the bouts with depression that inspired him. To
direct the show, he chose his longtime friend Fisher Stevens,
with whom he once appeared in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

We met at Bond 45, a trattoria across the street from the
Lyceum Theatre, where he dove into a plate of profiteroles
before a recent preview performance of the show.

Gerard: What, exactly, is a ghetto klown?

Leguizamo: My parents were incredibly strict, almost
military style. At Murry Bergtraum High I wanted to be as
different from my father as possible. So I acted out in school,
I was very anti-authority.

Round Table

Gerard: Were you a hoodlum?

Leguizamo: The thing I gravitated to was being the class
clown. It was very competitive. There was a table in the
lunchroom were the funniest people sat. It was an imitation of
the Algonquin Round Table.

You would diss anyone who came within 10 feet of you. But I
started to realize there were people who were really
imaginative, who made up crazy stories, who were charming
comedians.

Gerard: So you began to take it seriously?

Leguizamo: To be a comedian, you gotta jokesmith, there’s
no way around it. Sure there’s inspiration, but you gotta be
jokesmithing. I was writing in the subway, writing when I got
home. All over the place. I had files of stuff. I took acting
very seriously. I didn’t care about anything else but being
great.

Paying for It

I would go down to the docks and talk to the girls, the
trannies, and pay them, because you know they wouldn’t talk
unless you paid them. And I would do it like a reporter, write
it all down. I wanted to do something about all the different
personalities in the neighborhood, people I didn’t know, just to
show how varied Latin experience is. I’m doing a kind of oral
history, oral tradition. What I’ve always quested for is a sense
of tradition, a sense of history.

Gerard: In “Summer of Sam,” you played a philandering
husband who had some pretty raw sex scenes with several
actresses. Was that fun?

Leguizamo: No, it was embarrassing. If you get excited it’s
embarrassing, if you don’t get excited it’s insulting. It’s no-win, man.

Gerard: What can you tell us about the new show?

Leguizamo: It’s James Joyce, a portrait of the artist as,
well I guess as a middle-aged man, about the trajectory of
trying to be an artist. It’s about the hard knocks that you
encounter along the way, the failures and how you have to pick
yourself up. I’m being as raw and honest as I’ve ever been.

Gerard: What’s the hardest part of a show like this?

Leguizamo: Revealing the embarrassing stuff, the
humiliating stuff, the personal failures. Dealing with
depression. We all deal with depression but it’s good for me, it
helps me be creative. Helps me focus on what I want to do.

I didn’t perform for a long time. I tackle it in the play a
bit -- it was performance anxiety, horrible fear of failure. It
was very painful. So I did movies instead.

Sometimes I’m comfortable with it, sometimes I’m not so
comfortable with it. I didn’t want to just do a comedy show, I
wanted it to be as edgy and daring and scary as possible.

“Ghetto Klown” is at the Lyceum Theatre, 149 W. 45th St.,
where it opens on March 22. Information: +1-212-239-6200;
http://www.telecharge.com

(Jeremy Gerard is an editor and critic for Muse, the arts
and leisure section of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed
are his own.)